


Quiet, called love

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Nip/Tuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Katja</p>
    </blockquote>





	Quiet, called love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Katja

 

 

Christian remembered that he met Julia before Sean. He met her in Bio 53, because when he went into school he knew what he wanted. So did she before Sean, before Matt, before "in a few years" became "Sean, if I don't do this now, I'll never do it" became The-Explosion-That-Started-The-End-Of-Their-Marriage.

He didn't tell either of them that he thought of both of them as his. He thought that they were all living a somewhat unbalanced version of house with Matt and Annie as the kids, to be coddled and reprimanded.

Later, when he learned that Matt was his son, he hated, hated, hated that he had never been the one to reprimand, that his role had solely been to coddle. He hated that he had thought it was so important for Matt to like him, that he be the cool uncle with the cool car, that he stripped his son of some of his childhood. Christian hated that to him, virginity was something to be lost as soon as possible because he had never had it.

******

Julia decided on California because she liked Florida weather, but wanted to be as far away from Miami, as far away from that psycho, as far away from the press, as far away from Sean as possible.

When Christian woke up from the drug-induced sleep on the plane, he looked around, panicked. "Where's...?"

Quickly she covered his hand with hers, "He's here. Go back to sleep."

Maybe he was going to say Annie, likely he was going to say Matt, she ached that he might have said Wilber. It was unlikely that he would have said Sean. In her mind, she knew that she wasn't what had come between them, but the mind is a funny place, and she had been to enough psychology classes to know that she was projecting the blame onto Sean even though it wasn't really his fault.

The bandages had not come off of Christian's face yet, and if they could have, she knew about the other bandages. She knew that the one on his neck wasn't the only one that was going to need to be changed as soon as they landed. Everything needed to be taken slowly and she hated the rushed feeling that moving left her with.

On paper, it said that Christian owned the villa. When he thought that he had a son, he had been smart and his files had all his money laid out in careful increasing investments. The care placed in it all seemed unlike him, but when she told him about her plans in the hospital, he had agreed quickly. The sun in California, he said, was just what he needed.

He'll need psychiatric care, the doctors said. He'll need a nurse for a while, but after a few weeks, he'll be able to change his own bandages. He'll be able to use a toilet on his own in a few weeks.

Everything was packed by someone else, but she supervised and made sure that all his sex toys were thrown out. In the end, she asked if he wanted any of the possessions that made Christian into Christian Troy, womanizer at large. To her, it wasn't surprising that he didn't.

Sean insisted on keeping most of it in storage for "when Christian comes back," because to Sean that was an absolute, a fixed time that all his other schedules were being run by. When Christian came back, they were going to start the practice up in a new location with new people and new security. Julia didn't need a degree to see how close Sean was to a meltdown, but he had had his share of them within the last two years and it would *always* be him that she loved, depended on, possibly needed, but she was tired of dealing with his self-centered breakdowns.

Christian's neuroses were explicable, Sean's had ceased being the center of her existence.

She hesitated to place an importance on her own, because she knew that hers were what drove both of theirs.

******

Sean called once a day for the first week. Christian knew it was him, because Julia would leave the room and talk quietly.

Living together had increased the reliability of his life. Matt would come and go, quietly and somehow not making ripples in the carefully constructed equilibrium of Christian's life. Annie was the bright streak that reminded him that someone remembered who he had always wanted to be and not the man life had made him.

In their sessions his high priced psychiatrist would ask him about that. As though, Christian was the one who had ruined his own life instead of some psycho with a lock pick and a knife.

He went because Julia drove him to the office every Thursday and because once upon a time, he liked to think he could have wooed and bedded his psychiatrist.

When it came down to it, though, he thought that if he saw Julia with that broken look and the cracking voice making some ultimatum statement about how he needed to stop hurting *her,* everything would just be over. So, he didn't have sex with his psychiatrist.

His psychiatrist asked at a sessions why he was living with his best friend's wife instead of with his best friend.

He knew she was fishing for him to blame Sean, just like Julia was waiting for him to explode about it, but he couldn't do either. Instead, he answered the obvious, "Because Julia asked me to come with her and Sean wanted to stay where that Psycho could get us." His voice was still horse and the doctor said that he shouldn't overstrain himself. Apparently, having your throat slit did that.

Whenever they talked about the Psycho, his psychiatrist always tried to use whatever tacky, obvious nickname the media was using. By the time they got around to discussing why he wouldn't ever call the Psycho that, he had already spread his childhood drama out in front of her like a cracker and cheese spread. Have a taste of this psychosis, see if it explains why Christian is fucked up.

Like all the women he had wooed, she fell for his lines. Different setting, different goals, but he never had to talk about Sean or Julia or how he used to be in love with both of them.

******

The summer passed too quickly. She thought that they would all have time to heal, to adjust to do something that would make California feel more like home and less like a hideout from the real world.

Matt went to his new school, and she knew that he should be more upset that it was new and not home, but he wasn't and she didn't ask why not. His ex-girlfriend and her girlfriend, the girl his friend had hit with a car, even Ava all were there, ghosts or whatever Matt wanted to call the women that made up his past.

During schooldays, without Matt and Annie there, everything seemed empty at home. One day, Christian said, "What about you? You can't spend your whole life taking care of a cripple."

He wasn't crippled and she could have slapped him for the disdain he showed for himself. He was right, though, and she looked into school. Again.

When she said that her whole life was made up of "again"s he laughed and pointed out that that was everyone's life. The silence in the house was not made up of a lack of Matt or Annie or Sean.

On their walks into the garden, he would put a hand around her shoulder and they would not talk.

******

They argued a lot. It was mostly little things, things that when he was on his own, he didn't think about. The brand of shampoo to buy, the dinner to cook all became places for them to disagree. He wanted an expensive brand; she was used to buying for a family.

In the end, it was the time that the store clerk had said, "You and your wife" that made them stop doing it in public.

When Matt started applying to colleges, they would look them over together. Sean wanted to come out and visit schools with them, but business was booming because it was fall and women wanted their scars to be healed for winter formal wear. So, Christian helped with the application, remembering how he had to do it on his own, all the way.

He still remembered how to make someone look like a miracle on paper. After the forms were all filled out, Julia suggested that he take Matt to visit campuses and he balked. Matt tried not to look hurt and Christian tried not to look like he was still afraid of strange men. They both ignored the awkward distance between Cool Uncle Christian and Uncle Christian after that Psycho.

So, instead, Julia took Matt around California, leaving Annie with Christian. Annie was warm sunshine, blonde like her mother. She still called him, "Uncle Christian" and it was ok, because he wasn't her father, he really didn't need another complication. Matt called him "Christian" sometimes and "Uncle Christian" others. Once, he slipped and called him, "Dad." They both almost regretted it.

******

Logically, she knew that Christian wasn't her husband, or boyfriend, or lover, or even significant other. Because of that, she didn't want to put him down on any forms that would require him to be responsible for the kids that were clearly not his.

Except Matt was, and Annie hadn't seen her father for months. Christian read her to sleep every night, which meant that they were either becoming a family or they were becoming too close. Either one made her want to close her eyes and go back five years to when everything was more simple.

Christian read her daughter to sleep every night, and he yelled at Matt the one time that Matt had broken curfew. For some reason, whatever he had said made Matt walk around cautiously for days, careful of her, even more careful of Christian.

Julia hoped that it wasn't Christian saying, "I love you" that had caused the wariness. Christian overwhelmed her with his love. He loved her, he loved her children, making him so perfect except that he still didn't like having other men in the house and he had scars that she cried after looking at.

In the end, she put him down as the second emergency contact on all of the school forms. Sean was still their father, but if her children were in trouble she wanted someone who would be there in minutes. It was hard not to make the whole thing metaphorical.

******

Gina showed up on a Tuesday. Christian somehow wished that it had been a Thursday so he would have an excuse to not let her in.

She stayed for lunch and made a quiet comment about how domestic he and Julia looked. Playing house, she called it and he tried not to strangle her.

Since he had started listening to his psychiatrist, he had become more aware of how desperate Gina was, how much she had needed him. If asked, he would have said that he needed her, too.

Not even three months of therapy could make him say that he had needed, instead of loved, Wilber. The memories of Wilber got him through the nights that Julia didn't have tea ready and were subtitled LoveLoveLoveLove.

Gina was in town because UCLA had a research project on AIDS and sexual addiction. They were paying for some treatments and Gina knew well enough to get help where she could.

After she left, the silence moved again between Julia and him. Christian didn't miss the noise, exactly, but he did miss the way that talking had limited their relationship. Now, without a title and without words to clarify, they were too domestic to not be what he knew they weren't.

In his head he counted the days in between Sean's calls and the length of them. One was getting longer and one was getting shorter.

*****

Knowing that it was unhealthy didn't stop Julia from remembering what it had felt like to have Christian's hands on her. She remembered it accidentally in the shower, and then it was all over before she could wipe the image out of her mind.

Guiltily, she talked to her own psychiatrist about it. Her secrets were no longer hers to keep when she told them to her psychiatrist. She was smart enough to know that it was wrong to depend on her psychiatrist like that, that psychiatrists were not there to be the guardians of her secrets.

Even in her mind that sounded unhealthy and melodramatic.

******

Christian forgot how life used to be, in his state of calm. He called Kimber and they talked like two friends, instead of people who had tried to ruin each other.

Making peace, his psychiatrist said. She said some other psychobabble, but he only remembered that later, when he accidentally answered the phone and it was Sean on the other end.

By the time Julia looked up from the cutting board and realized the hour and the day and who it must be, he had already hung up. Some things were just too much for him to make peace with before he had dealt with everything else.

******

Sleeping together came as an extension of everything else. He was crying and she was petting and he hated that he hadn't had an erection since the night and the knife and the pain that he couldn't stop. When he woke up and she was curled around him, he didn't move because he knew that she would feel guilty or uncomfortable.

Julia was still his best friend's wife.

She didn't seem to care, though, and the next night she moved him to her bed after dinner. "Here," she said, handing him his pills. When his psychiatrist said that he shouldn't get involved with anyone until he felt ready, his psychiatrist had never meant Julia. At least, that's what he told himself when he allowed her to hold him.

******

Then Matt was graduating, and they had been living together for too long for it not to be something. He said that his psychiatrist thought that he was making progress.

Julia remembered the first night that they had sex in their new house in their new life more clearly than she remembered the first time they had sex. It wasn't that same fast pace, that same desperate urge. This was slow and when he cried afterwards, she had held him and been grateful.

Sean came over for a week in the beginning of summer, saying that he was going to stay for a bit. If he had planned his trip, he didn't show it. His suitcase was mostly socks and two pairs of pants.

It wasn't like the time that she had kicked him out when Matt was young or the time that he had an affair. It was more like the time that she had been so angry at Christian that she hadn't wanted to let him back into her life. Christian had tried and tried to get back into their family.

Sean didn't understand that he was the outsider now, that his checks paid for the kids, but Christian's stock paid for them to live like this. In the end, he figured it out, and they let him stay until he dealt with the idea that, "when Christian comes back" really meant "never."

*****

Christian remembered that he had met Julia first. He remembered when he first realized how perfect she was. It was at Matt's eleventh birthday and Christian had been lead on a tummy tuck two hours before Matt blew out his candles. Julia was still carrying around a few pounds from Annie's birth and she looked more perfect than anything he could have created when she smiled and brought out the cake.

In the end, it wasn't the psychiatrist or the distance or the front page picture of the Psycho in custody, it was the way that her hair shined in California sun. It was the way that she finally finished med school. It was reading Annie to sleep when Julia was interning.

Christian healed because he could finally be the one that she came home to.

 


End file.
